220. AN IMAGE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT REPRESENTED. CONCERNING THE TORMENT OF THE UNHAPPY, AND AT LENGTH THEIR LIBERATION. A DISPUTE CONCERNING MERCY This night, having been awakened from sleep, many things were shown me which I cannot well describe. There was a certain kind of revolving of spirits, with the manifest perception that many of those who were in the ultimate heaven were being thrust down, and many who were in captivity were ascending. Moreover, it was given me more clearly to perceive that the unhappy, who had been so long in hard captivity, contended many times in a dream with those at liberty in the ultimate heaven; and these latter wanted to deprive them of mercy, thus of all hope of salvation. This contention lasted a long time. When I awoke, they complained exceedingly with much anxiety, and indeed repeatedly, that the others wanted to deprive them of mercy, and that thus it would be all over with them; for they were undergoing grievous punishment, so that they wished nothing more than to lose their life entirely. The only hope afforded them by God Messiah was that they could think that there still was mercy. When the wicked, in the liberty accorded them, wanted to take this hope away from them, their anxiety was doubled, so that they fell into despair. With regard to the contention itself, how the contention about mercy was carried on is not very readily described, for such representations of spirits cannot be described easily. When, therefore, they complained so bitterly concerning that injury, that their sole consolation - that there would be mercy - was being taken away from them, there at length shone forth the hope that they would not lose the mercy which had been promised them. I could also sometimes perceive in myself, the stirring of mercy, not as mine, but as belonging to the heavens, and thus to God Messiah. Those spirits who had been placed in such anxiety were at length liberated in a wonderful manner, which was made manifest to me by a kind of ascent, which likewise cannot well be described. Afterwards I spoke with them, and they are most modest: so they are now among the happy. 1747, the night between Oct. 27 and 28, o.s. It was sometimes then shown me that mercy was almost taken away from them, so that there was little short of their being reduced to the last extremity of straitness and eternal death before they were liberated: but it was told me that they had led an evil life.